The sexual abuse crisis has hit Australia now,
what exactly is going on at the moment?

The most
recent event is that the Federal Government has announced a Royal Commission
into sexual abuse of minors in institutions, religious and non-religious.
Victim groups have been making a concerted push, as have the media in the last
six months, to drive the Government to take this action. On November 12th
Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a Royal Commission.

So the Commission will also focus on
non-Catholic institutions? But media coverage seems to be almost exclusively
related to religious institutions, is it not?

It’s true
that the media have focused largely on the Catholic Church. The Australian
Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has run several high profile stories about
specific dioceses and terrible incidents that have occurred in those dioceses
and that has stirred a wider national conversation.

There are a
lot of organized victim groups which have agitated for an investigation into
the Catholic Church. One of the things that the leader of the opposition in the
Federal Parliament said was conditional to his support for a Royal Commission
was that it should not only pertain to the Catholic Church but should be
extended to other organizations such as Government and non-Catholic
organizations.

The cases that have come to light, are they
recent?

The cases
that have been referenced, particularly by the ABC are cases in which the
incidents occurred nearly 20 years ago. I have heard statistics from the State
of Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state, which suggest something
like 13 to 20 cases that happened after 1990, so there seems to be a massive
drop-off in the number of offenses, whether this is due to delayed reporting is
anyone’s guess, but it certainly is true that most of the allegations are 15 to
20 years old or older.

How have the bishops reacted to the Royal
Commission?

Australia’s
bishops have universally welcomed the Royal Commission. There was a joint
statement put out on behalf of all Australian bishops saying they welcomed the
move and were interested in continuing to ensure that healing was available for
victims. The one point of controversy was Cardinal George Pell, from Sydney,
who held his own press conference on November 13 in which he reiterated support
for the Royal Commission but also said he hoped the Royal Commission would separate
fact from fiction, accusing what he described as a hostile media of
exaggerating the number of claims. He’s been roundly criticized by the media
and victim groups for doing that, but broadly Australian bishops have welcomed
this move.

Julia Gillard, primeira-ministra da Austrália

There has been debate about the seal of
confession…

There was a
debate for many days, mainly in tabloid publications such as the News Limited publications
but also in Australia’s second largest media group Fairfax publications. That
seems to have died down, at least for the time being. It was set off by the
premier of New South Wales who said he couldn’t imagine how a priest who heard
that in confession could sit on it and not report it to police, and that
fuelled the debate.

In the
quality press it has largely been assessed to be a red herring. Most people
would agree it’s not how most incidences of abuse come to light, and most
people want to see real action taken to real situations.

As a journalist but also as a Catholic, what
has your reaction been to what is going on?

I guess
it’s a mixed picture for me because I watch some of the media coverage and
there has been an incredible looseness of language. Whether the coverage
relates to specific incidences in specific dioceses its always the church that
is held to account. Of course as a Catholic whenever I hear “the church” I
think of myself and one billion other people and the saints in heaven and so
on.

But the
reporting aside, when you hear the accounts of victims you know that that pain
is real. And where there are incidents, particularly in the last 20 years when
we are supposed to have cleaned up our protocols and our acts, when you hear of
incidents that are recent, I see that as an opportunity to do our best by
children. Having said that I think most media in Australia are of a
progressive, vaguely anti-Catholic bent and some of this reporting seems to be
a proxy for underlying resentment against the catholic church and its teaching,
but I am trying to focus on the facts that have happened, and the pain of
victims and making sure it doesn’t happen again, I think it’s an opportunity
for us to do that.